In this paper, elliptic optimal control problems with $L^1$-control cost and box constraints on the control are considered. To numerically solve the optimal control problems, we use the First optimize, then discretize approach. We focus on the inexact alternating direction method of multipliers (iADMM) and employ the standard piecewise linear finite element approach to discretize the subproblems in each iteration. However, in general, solving the subproblems is expensive, especially when the discretization is at a fine level. Motivated by the efficiency of the multigrid method for solving large-scale problems, we combine the multigrid strategy with the iADMM algorithm. Instead of fixing the mesh size before the computation process, we propose the strategy of gradually refining the grid. Moreover, to overcome the difficulty whereby the $L^1$-norm does not have a decoupled form, we apply nodal quadrature formulas to approximately discretize the $L^1$-norm and $L^2$-norm. Based on these strategies, an efficient multilevel heterogeneous ADMM (mhADMM) algorithm is proposed. The total error of the mhADMM consists of two parts: the discretization error resulting from the finite-element discretization and the iteration error resulting from solving the discretized subproblems. Both errors can be regarded as the error of inexactly solving infinite-dimensional subproblems. Thus, the mhADMM can be regarded as the iADMM in function space. Furthermore, theoretical results on the global convergence, as well as the iteration complexity results $o(1/k)$ for the mhADMM, are given. Numerical results show the efficiency of the mhADMM algorithm.

Adaptive optics (AO)-corrected retina flood illumination imaging technology is widely used for investigating both structural and functional aspects of the retina. Given the inherent low-contrast nature of original retinal images, it is necessary to perform image restoration. Total variation (TV) regularization is an efficient regularization technique for AO retinal image restoration. However, a main shortcoming of TV regularization is its potential to experience the staircase effects, particularly in smooth regions of the image. To overcome the drawback, a new image restoration model is proposed for AO retinal images. This model utilizes the overlapping group sparse total variation (OGSTV) as a regularization term. Due to the structural characteristics of AO retinal images, only partial information regarding the PSF is known. Consequently, we have to solve a more complicated myopic deconvolution problem. To address this computational challenge, we propose an ADMM-MM-LAP method to solve the proposed model. First, we apply the alternating direction method of multiplier (ADMM) as the outer-layer optimization method. Then, appropriate algorithms are employed to solve the ADMM subproblems based on their inherent structures. Specifically, the majorization–minimization (MM) method is applied to handle the asymmetry OGSTV regularization component, while a modified version of the linearize and project (LAP) method is adopted to address the tightly coupled subproblem. Theoretically, we establish the complexity analysis of the proposed method. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms the existing state-of-the-art TV model across several metrics.

Optimization problems with PDE constraints are widely used in engineering and technical fields. In some practical applications, it is necessary to smooth the control variables and suppress their large fluctuations, especially at the boundary. Therefore, we propose an elliptic PDE-constrained optimization model with a control gradient penalty term. However, introducing this penalty term increases the complexity and difficulty of the problems. To solve the problems numerically, we adopt the strategy of “First discretize, then optimize”. First, the finite element method is employed to discretize the optimization problems. Then, a heterogeneous strategy is introduced to formulate the augmented Lagrangian function for the subproblems. Subsequently, we propose a three-block inexact heterogeneous alternating direction method of multipliers (three-block ihADMM). Theoretically, we provide a global convergence analysis of the three-block ihADMM algorithm and discuss the iteration complexity results. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.